


The Dead Detective

by jjsngadget



Category: Elementary, Elementary (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-02
Updated: 2012-10-02
Packaged: 2017-11-15 12:18:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/527236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjsngadget/pseuds/jjsngadget
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A retelling of The Dying Detective, adapted for my newest fandom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dead Detective

**The Dead Detective**  
  
Joan had just finished her morning jog and was cooling down outside the brownstone when her cell phone chimed with a text message.  
  
Come home, am dying. - S.Holmes  
  
Half exasperated, and half worried that Sherlock had regressed to his addictions and overdosed, Joan rushed up the stairs. A bloody handprint on the stair railing made her run faster.  
  
“Sherlock!” she shouted.  
  
“In here!”   
  
Sherlock was laying on the floor, his feet sticking out under the coffee table. There was an obscenely well-stocked medical kit at his side, and a small pool of blood under his left shoulder.  
  
He grinned up at her upside down. “Oh good, you’re here. I wasn’t expecting you to look at your phone so quickly, so I exaggerated a bit.”   
  
Joan dropped to her knees at his side. “What are you doing?”  
  
He waved the bloody scalpel at her. “Performing surgery on myself. The angle’s bit wrong though, that’s why I need you.”  
  
She grabbed a cloth from the clean water basin laying among his detritus and wiped at the jagged slash near his collarbone. “Is this a gunshot?”  
  
“Yes, bullet’s still there, I need it for evidence.”  
  
“And you didn’t call an ambulance, why?” She was already reaching for her phone in her pocket.  
  
A strong hand clutched her wrist. “Don’t. He thinks I’m dead. I can use that to my advantage. A police report and hospital stay gives him a second opportunity. “   
  
‘He’ was Culverton Smith, the Cereal Killer, perhaps the most ridiculous murderer in New York history. He marked his victims with a box of cereal, in alphabetical order. The first few times, he chose victims coming home from the grocery store, so the pattern wasn’t noticed until a box of Fruity Pebbles was left by a woman shot dead on the subway. She was found on the L train at Montrose Avenue, with a note that said “Why haven’t you found me yet?”.  
  
Sherlock smiled at her. “You can do it. I trust you. Besides, at this angle, the gsw is only mildly fatal. Mostly just have to worry about secondary infection.”  
  
Joan would have bristled at Sherlock doing her job for her, but it was almost comforting. A reminder that everything she was diagnosing about him was being verified by a second opinion. Granted an opinion that had no medical degree, but still...she could see it for what it was. His form of kindness.   
  
“Serial killers are hard,” She dabbed at the wound with a gauze soaked with hydrogen peroxide. “you have to wait for them to make a mistake.” he glanced at her work, “Oh that stings. Shooting me was a mistake, I got a good look at him. No mask, idiot.”  
  
While he was talking, Joan donned a pair of gloves she found in the med kit and ripped the sterile wrapping off a pair of forceps. “Where did you even get this stuff?”  
  
“I have a friend at St. Barnabas. An ambulance kit went missing off the back of a delivery lorry.”  
  
“Uh huh.” Focusing on the entry wound, she noted it was from a small caliber weapon, no stippling, so far away enough that no gunpowder reached the skin. A glance back at the kit told her, “there’s no painkillers.”  
  
Sherlock hmmed. “Built up a tolerance. Just do what you need to.”  
  
A quick slice with the scalpel widened the entry wound enough to insert the forceps.  There was a small ‘oh’ from her patient as the forceps knocked against the bullet, but Joan was able to grab it and retract her instrument with no fuss.  
  
Bandaging the wound was the work of moments, after which Sherlock let out a tiny whimper, and relaxed from his tensed up position. “I’m just gonna lay here for a moment, don’t mind me.”  
  
After Joan had cleaned her instruments and placed the bullet in an evidence container, she helped Sherlock to lay on the sofa. The reusable instruments went back into the kit, and the bloodied cloths went into a black garbage bag.  
  
When she returned to attend to Sherlock, she found him texting on his phone, while examining the bullet with a jeweler's loop on his eye.  
  
“You should be resting,” she chided.  
  
“I’ll rest when I’m dead. Which is in about five minutes. I’ve asked Gregson to spread the news that New York’s only consulting detective was found dead in an alley.” The bullet went back into the evidence container; it and the loop were dropped onto the floor. “A .22, no distinguishing marks. Still, the striations will give us a match to the gun.” Almost as an afterthought he added, “you’re not claustrophobic are you?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Good. I’m gonna need you to hide in the walls,” he indicated a half-done insulation job along the wall this house shared with the next in the row. “You’re small enough, you should fit.” There was barely enough space to squeeze a person. “Just pull down the rug and you’ll be fine.”   
  
Joan hadn’t even noticed the rolled up cloth hanging off a heavy duty bracket in the ceiling. Which, seeing as how she’d investigated the home for any hidden drugs the day she arrived, told her Sherlock had installed it in the time she’d been jogging.  
  
“Sherlock, you’ve been shot. If you won’t go to the hospital, I need to monitor you. I can’t do that hiding in the wall.”  
  
“I just thought you’d like to catch Culverton when he comes here. I may have given him the impression there was some terribly incriminating evidence at my home which would be released to the police upon my death. He’ll be coming here to retrieve this fictitious evidence, and when he does, I may be able to scare a confession out of him as well.”  
  
Once again, Joan was struck with the thought that Sherlock was not certifiably insane only because he’d run verbal circles around his court-appointed psychiatrist. and she was insane for going along with his plans.  
  
“Do we know when he’s going to come here?”  
  
“Ten minutes,” he showed her his phone screen, a GPS tracking app displayed. At her look, he admitted. “I put a bug in his jacket. Now help me get presentable.”  
  
Getting Sherlock into non-bloody clothes that were also clean(-ish) and propped on the couch in a suitable pose took nearly all the time they had. Joan had just dropped the tapestry down in front of her hidey-hole when she heard scratching at the front door.  
  
Behind the rug wasn’t as dusty as she feared so she was able to breath without fear of coughing, and she could still hear the sounds from the room. Three heavy steps, then a male voice said, “I thought you were dead.”  
  
Sherlock pffted. “Reports have been greatly exaggerated, blah blah. You’re here for the evidence?”  
  
“You know I am.”  
  
“I lied. But thanks to you, I was only a liar for a little bit. You left your bullet in my shoulder. I’m positive it will match the bullets from the other victims, even an unregistered gun can be traced.”  
  
“ENOUGH.” A gun cocked.  
  
“And now that you’ve broken into my home, I can shoot you as an intruder.” There were two quick gunshots, a scream, and the sound of a gun hitting the floor  
  
“Watson, you can come out now.”  
  
When Joan walked out from behind the rug, she saw Culverton Smith on the ground, cradling his shattered knee caps, his gun a yard away from his grip. Sherlock sat on the couch, his own gun laying on the cushion beside him.   
  
“This is a lot easier than it was in England,” he commented, “Here I can shoot the bad guys back.”


End file.
